8 ms·

When you say bad school districts in SF, you mean the one district, right? SF school assignment is a (failed social experiment) lottery system where your kids c

by scurvy 10y ago

When you say bad school districts in SF, you mean the one district, right? SF school assignment is a (failed social experiment) lottery system where your kids can be assigned anywhere in the city, regardless of the fact that you live a block from a school. Most parents leave SF because they don't want their kids being part of a failed social experiment. The SF USD has been playing social scientist since the 1970s with disastrous results. Want to make it better? Kick the DINKs off the school board and make having an enrolled child a requirement for being on the board.

pizzetta 10y ago
Yes, the lottery system which can land your kid who lives one block away from their preferred school but gets assigned to a school on the other side of town and 45 mins away in traffic is one big red flashing migraine for many parents.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Yet another good reason to not bother having kids. Honestly, if I found a partner who wanted kids, I'd be looking really hard at finding a job in another country because this country (US) is a terrible place to raise a kid.
  - pizzetta 10y ago
    California is notorious for having poorly run schools. For good schools look in Massachusetts. If you look at the BOS metro area they tend towards the top of the school systems nation-wide. It's hard to find poorly run schools in the BOS metro area --occasionally you get a few complaints from people unhappy with blue-collar[1] pupils getting pushed into regional schools in good districts. [1] mostly white but from non-professional families.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      That may be, but in many states (probably any place urban or suburban), you still have to worry about getting arrested if you let your kid walk to school or play outside by himself.
tabeth 10y ago
Don't live in SF, but I fail to see how that's inherently bad. It is inconvenient, for sure. But if the school a block from you was terrible and the school your child was randomly assigned to was amazing there would be no problems, right? Doesn't this system simply incentivize all schools to become good? I do bet, though, that this experiment stemmed from people taking over the areas where the good schools were. You'd just be switching problems, though, by allowing people to go to schools they're geographically adjacent to. See school district boundaries.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  When the school is on the other side of town the parents get involved in the students life and education less. They drop them off and pick them up and that's about as far as the interaction goes --they don't go to school functions, PTA activities, or other activities. There is more involvement from parents of kids who live close to the schools and they demand more from the system.
  - tabeth 10y ago
    Sure. I don't disagree with any of that. I still think you'd just be trading one problem for another. In the case that you have to live close then you would have to be wealthy enough to live close to a school that has activities and after school functions, etc, worth going to. The only people who'd be OK with that are obviously the people who either (a) already live close, or (b) can easily afford to move close to the better schools (of course the rich can always just send their kids to private schools, as well). Poor people would prefer randomness since they're unlikely to get a top tier education for their kids anyway. Randomness gives them a chance. People wealthy enough to care but not wealthy enough to send their kids to private schools, on the other hand obviously won't like this: they'd prefer to guarantee their kids educational security via money.
    - Decade 10y ago
      Poor people also prefer schools nearby, or some place you don’t need 90 minutes and 2 bus transfers to go to school. What has been improving San Francisco schools (e.g. Balboa High School) was Asians taking over. Which is not a preferable mechanism, in many ways. What would make San Francisco schools even better is to be able to afford to hire more teachers. The naive approach is to pump more money into the district, and we really should reform Proposition 13 of 1978, but a more practical approach would be to legalize housing construction, so teachers wouldn’t have to compete so much for non-luxury housing with firemen and nurses and service workers and homeless crackheads.
cnnsucks 10y ago
> they don't want their kids being part of a failed social experiment. Indeed. You don't see much investigation on the consequences of these experiments; the state is rarely introspective. If there was any bigger accelerant to the white flight phenomena in the 70's than the `integration' experiment I've never heard of it. It went all the way to the Supreme Court and when it was decided that Detroit (and therefore many other big urban school districts) couldn't force surrounding suburbs to participate in the experiment (Milliken v. Bradley) the fate of that city and many others was sealed.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
DINK is not an acronym I recognize, and Googling it is difficult. Do you mean Dual-Income No Kids? If so, which board members have no kids, or no kids in the district?
rsync 10y ago
"SF school assignment is a (failed social experiment) lottery system where your kids can be assigned anywhere in the city, regardless of the fact that you live a block from a school." I am well aware of this policy and have been for a long time. AND YET, I still get mortified and upset every time I am reminded of it. It's mind-bogglingly bad policy. My children are not in SFUSD but even still, I feel like I should work politically against this policy just to make the world a (much) better place.

by scurvy 10y ago

pizzetta 10y ago

Yes, the lottery system which can land your kid who lives one block away from their preferred school but gets assigned to a school on the other side of town and 45 mins away in traffic is one big red flashing migraine for many parents.

Arizhel 10y ago
Yet another good reason to not bother having kids. Honestly, if I found a partner who wanted kids, I'd be looking really hard at finding a job in another country because this country (US) is a terrible place to raise a kid.
- pizzetta 10y ago
  California is notorious for having poorly run schools. For good schools look in Massachusetts. If you look at the BOS metro area they tend towards the top of the school systems nation-wide. It's hard to find poorly run schools in the BOS metro area --occasionally you get a few complaints from people unhappy with blue-collar[1] pupils getting pushed into regional schools in good districts. [1] mostly white but from non-professional families.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    That may be, but in many states (probably any place urban or suburban), you still have to worry about getting arrested if you let your kid walk to school or play outside by himself.

tabeth 10y ago

Don't live in SF, but I fail to see how that's inherently bad. It is inconvenient, for sure. But if the school a block from you was terrible and the school your child was randomly assigned to was amazing there would be no problems, right? Doesn't this system simply incentivize all schools to become good? I do bet, though, that this experiment stemmed from people taking over the areas where the good schools were. You'd just be switching problems, though, by allowing people to go to schools they're geographically adjacent to. See school district boundaries.

pizzetta 10y ago
When the school is on the other side of town the parents get involved in the students life and education less. They drop them off and pick them up and that's about as far as the interaction goes --they don't go to school functions, PTA activities, or other activities. There is more involvement from parents of kids who live close to the schools and they demand more from the system.
- tabeth 10y ago
  Sure. I don't disagree with any of that. I still think you'd just be trading one problem for another. In the case that you have to live close then you would have to be wealthy enough to live close to a school that has activities and after school functions, etc, worth going to. The only people who'd be OK with that are obviously the people who either (a) already live close, or (b) can easily afford to move close to the better schools (of course the rich can always just send their kids to private schools, as well). Poor people would prefer randomness since they're unlikely to get a top tier education for their kids anyway. Randomness gives them a chance. People wealthy enough to care but not wealthy enough to send their kids to private schools, on the other hand obviously won't like this: they'd prefer to guarantee their kids educational security via money.
  - Decade 10y ago
    Poor people also prefer schools nearby, or some place you don’t need 90 minutes and 2 bus transfers to go to school. What has been improving San Francisco schools (e.g. Balboa High School) was Asians taking over. Which is not a preferable mechanism, in many ways. What would make San Francisco schools even better is to be able to afford to hire more teachers. The naive approach is to pump more money into the district, and we really should reform Proposition 13 of 1978, but a more practical approach would be to legalize housing construction, so teachers wouldn’t have to compete so much for non-luxury housing with firemen and nurses and service workers and homeless crackheads.

cnnsucks 10y ago

> they don't want their kids being part of a failed social experiment. Indeed. You don't see much investigation on the consequences of these experiments; the state is rarely introspective. If there was any bigger accelerant to the white flight phenomena in the 70's than the `integration' experiment I've never heard of it. It went all the way to the Supreme Court and when it was decided that Detroit (and therefore many other big urban school districts) couldn't force surrounding suburbs to participate in the experiment (Milliken v. Bradley) the fate of that city and many others was sealed.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

DINK is not an acronym I recognize, and Googling it is difficult. Do you mean Dual-Income No Kids? If so, which board members have no kids, or no kids in the district?

rsync 10y ago

"SF school assignment is a (failed social experiment) lottery system where your kids can be assigned anywhere in the city, regardless of the fact that you live a block from a school." I am well aware of this policy and have been for a long time. AND YET, I still get mortified and upset every time I am reminded of it. It's mind-bogglingly bad policy. My children are not in SFUSD but even still, I feel like I should work politically against this policy just to make the world a (much) better place.